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version of Section I.
I.5 What could the social structure of anarchy look like?
The social and political structure of anarchy is similar to that of the economic
structure, i.e., it is based on a voluntary federation of decentralised,
directly democratic policy-making bodies. These are the neighbourhood
and community assemblies and their confederations. In these grassroots
political units, the concept of "self-management" becomes that
of "self-government", a form of municipal organisation in which
people take back control of their living places from the bureaucratic
state and the capitalist class whose interests it serves.
"A new economic phase demands a new political phase," argued
Kropotkin, "A revolution as profound as that dreamed of by the
[libertarian] socialists cannot accept the mould of an out-dated political
life. A new society based on equality of condition, on the collective
possession of the instruments of work, cannot tolerate for a week
. . . the representative system . . . if we want the social revolution,
we must seek a form of political organisation that will correspond
to the new method of economic organisation. . . . The future belongs
to the free groupings of interests and not to governmental centralisation;
it belongs to freedom and not to authority." [Words of a Rebel,
pp. 143-4]
Thus the social structure of an anarchist society will be the opposite
of the current system. Instead of being centralised and top-down as
in the state, it will be decentralised and organised from the bottom
up. As Kropotkin argued, "socialism must become more popular,
more communalistic, and less dependent upon indirect government through
elected representatives. It must become more self-governing."
[Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 185] While anarchists
have various different conceptions of how this communal system would
be constituted (as we will see), they is total agreement on these
basic visions and principles.
This empowerment of ordinary citizens through decentralisation and
direct democracy will eliminate the alienation and apathy that are
now rampant in the modern city and town, and (as always happens when
people are free) unleash a flood of innovation in dealing with the
social breakdown now afflicting our urban wastelands. The gigantic
metropolis with its hierarchical and impersonal administration, its
atomised and isolated "residents," will be transformed into
a network of humanly scaled participatory communities (usually called
"communes"), each with its own unique character and forms of
self-government, which will be co-operatively linked through federation
with other communities at several levels, from the municipal through
the bioregional to the global.
Of course, it can (and has) been argued that people are just not
interested in "politics." Further, some claim that this disinterest
is why governments exist -- people delegate their responsibilities
and power to others because they have better things to do. Such an
argument, however, is flawed on empirical grounds. As we indicated
in section B.2.6, centralisation of
power in both the French and American revolutions occurred because
working people were taking too much interest in politics and
social issues, not the reverse ("To attack the central power, to
strip it of its prerogatives, to decentralise, to dissolve authority,
would have been to abandon to the people the control of its affairs,
to run the risk of a truly popular revolution. That is why the bourgeoisie
sought to reinforce the central government even more. . ." [Kropotkin,
Words of a Rebel, p. 143]).
Simply put, the state is centralised to facilitate minority rule
by excluding the mass of people from taking part in the decision making
processes within society. This is to be expected as social structures
do not evolve by chance -- rather they develop to meet specific needs
and requirements. The specific need of the ruling class is to rule
and that means marginalising the bulk of the population. Its requirement
is for minority power and this is transformed into the structure of
the state (and the capitalist company).
Even if we ignore the historical evidence on this issue, anarchists
do not draw this conclusion from the current apathy that surrounds
us. In fact, we argue that this apathy is not the cause of government
but its result. Government is an inherently hierarchical system in
which ordinary people are deliberately marginalised. The powerlessness
people feel due to the workings of the system ensure that they are
apathetic about it, thus guaranteeing that wealthy and powerful elites
govern society without hindrance from the oppressed and exploited
majority.
Moreover, government usually sticks its nose into areas that most
people have no real interest in. Some things, as in the regulation
of industry or workers' safety and rights, a free society could leave
to those affected to make their own decisions (we doubt that workers
would subject themselves to unsafe working conditions, for example).
In others, such as the question of personal morality and acts, a free
people would have no interest in (unless it harmed others, of course).
This, again, would reduce the number of issues that would be discussed
in a free commune.
Also, via decentralisation, a free people would be mainly discussing
local issues, so reducing the complexity of many questions and solutions.
Wider issues would, of course, be discussed but these would be on
specific issues and so more focused in their nature than those raised
in the legislative bodies of the state. So, a combination of centralisation
and an irrational desire to discuss every and all questions also helps
make "politics" seem boring and irrelevant.
As noted above, this result is not an accident and the marginalisation
of "ordinary" people is actually celebrated in bourgeois "democratic"
theory. As Noam Chomsky notes:
"Twentieth century democratic theorists advise that 'The public
mmust be put in its place,' so that the 'responsible men' may
'live free of the trampling and roar of a bewildered herd,'
'ignorant and meddlesome outsiders' whose 'function' is to be
'interested spectators of action,' not participants, lending
their weight periodically to one or another of the leadership
class (elections), then returning to their private concerns.
(Walter Lippman). The great mass of the population, 'ignorant
and mentally deficient,' must be kept in their place for the
common good, fed with 'necessary illusion' and 'emotionally
potent oversimplifications' (Wilson's Secretary of State
Robert Lansing, Reinhold Niebuhr). Their 'conservative'
counterparts are only more extreme in their adulation of the
Wise Men who are the rightful rulers -- in the service of the
rich and powerful, a minor footnote regularly forgotten."
[Year 501, p. 18]
As discussed in Section B.2.6 ("Who
benefits from centralisation?") this marginalisation of the
public from political life ensures that the wealthy can be "left
alone" to use their power as they see fit. In other words, such
marginalisation is a necessary part of a fully functioning capitalist
society. Hence, under capitalism, libertarian social structures have
to be discouraged. Or as Chomsky puts it, the "rabble must be instructed
in the values of subordination and a narrow quest for personal gain
within the parameters set by the institutions of the masters; meaningful
democracy, with popular association and action, is a threat to be
overcome." [Op. Cit., p. 18] This philosophy can be seen
in the statement of a US Banker in Venezuela under the murderous Jimenez
dictatorship:
"You have the freedom here to do whatever you want to do with your
money, and to me, that is worth all the political freedom in the
world." [quoted by Chomsky, Op. Cit., p. 99]
Deterring libertarian alternatives to statism is a common feature
of our current system. By marginalising and disempowering people,
the ability of individuals to manage their own social activities is
undermined and weakened. They develop a "fear of freedom" and
embrace authoritarian institutions and "strong leaders," which
in turn reinforces their marginalisation.
This consequence is hardly surprising. Anarchists maintain that
the desire to participate and the ability to participate are in a
symbiotic relationship: participation feeds on itself. By creating
the social structures that allow participation, participation will
increase. As people increasingly take control of their lives, so their
ability to do so also increases. The challenge of having to take responsibility
for decisions that make a difference is at the same time an opportunity
for personal development. To begin to feel power, having previously
felt powerless, to win access to the resources required for effective
participation and learn how to use them, is a liberating experience.
Once people become active subjects, making things happen in one aspect
of their lives, they are less likely to remain passive objects, allowing
things to happen to them, in other aspects. All in all, "politics"
is far too important an subject to leave to politicians, the wealthy
and bureaucrats. After all, it is what affects, your friends, community,
and, ultimately, the planet you live on. Such issues cannot be left
to anyone but you.
Hence a meaningful communal life based on self-empowered individuals
is a distinct possibility (indeed, it has repeatedly appeared throughout
history). It is the hierarchical structures in statism and capitalism,
marginalising and disempowering the majority, which is at the root
of the current wide scale apathy in the face of increasing social
and ecological disruption. Libertarian socialists therefore call for
a radically new form of political system to replace the centralised
nation-state, a form that would be based around confederations of
self-governing communities. In other words, in anarchism "[s]ociety
is a society of societies; a league of leagues of leagues; a commonwealth
of commonwealths of commonwealths; a republic of republics of republics.
Only there is freedom and order, only there is spirit, a spirit which
is self-sufficiency and community, unity and independence." [Gustav
Landauer, For Socialism, pp. 125-126]
To create such a system would require dismantling the nation-state
and reconstituting relations between communities on the basis of self-determination
and free and equal confederation from below. In the following subsections
we will examine in more detail why this new system is needed and what
it might look like. As we stressed in the introduction, these are
just suggestions of possible anarchist solutions to social organisation.
Most anarchists recognise that anarchist communities will co-exist
with non-anarchist ones after the destruction of the existing state.
As we are anarchists we are discussing anarchist visions. We will
leave it up to non-anarchists to paint their own pictures of a possible
future.
As Murray Bookchin argues in The Rise of Urbanisation and the Decline of
Citizenship (reprinted as From Urbanisation to Cities),
the modern city is a virtual appendage of the capitalist workplace,
being an outgrowth and essential counterpart of the factory (where
"factory" means any enterprise in which surplus value is extracted
from employees). As such, cities are structured and administered primarily
to serve the needs of the capitalist elite -- employers -- rather
than the needs of the many -- their employees and their families.
From this standpoint, the city must be seen as (1) a transportation
hub for importing raw materials and exporting finished products; and
(2) a huge dormitory for wage slaves, conveniently locating them near
the enterprises where their labour is to exploited, providing them
with entertainment, clothing, medical facilities, etc. as well as
coercive mechanisms for controlling their behaviour.
The attitude behind the management of these "civic" functions
by the bureaucratic servants of the capitalist ruling class is purely
instrumental: worker-citizens are to be treated merely aas means to
corporate ends, not as ends in themselves. This attitude is reflected
in the overwhelmingly alienating features of the modern city: its
inhuman scale; the chilling impersonality of its institutions and
functionaries; its sacrifice of health, comfort, pleasure, and aesthetic
considerations to bottom-line requirements of efficiency and "cost
effectiveness"; the lack of any real communal interaction among
residents other than collective consumption of commodities and amusements;
their consequent social isolation and tendency to escape into television,
alcohol, drugs, gangs, etc. Such features make the modern metropolis
the very antithesis of the genuine community for which most of its
residents hunger. This contradiction at the heart of the system contains
the possibility of radical social and political change.
The key to that change, from the anarchist standpoint, is the creation
of a network of participatory communities based on self-government
through direct, face-to-face democracy in grassroots neighbourhood
and community assemblies. As we argued in section
I.2.3 such assemblies will be born in social struggle and so reflect
the needs of the struggle and those within it so our comments here
must be considered as generalisations of the salient features of such
communities and not blue-prints.
Traditionally, these participatory communities were called communes
in anarchist theory ("The basic social and economic cell of the
anarchist society is the free, independent commune" [A. Grachev,
quoted by Paul Avrich, The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution,
p. 64]). Within anarchist thought, there are two main conceptions
of the free commune. One vision is based on workplace delegates, the
other on neighbourhood assemblies. We will sketch each in turn.
Bakunin argued that the "future social organisation must be made
solely from the bottom upwards, by the free association or federation
of workers, firstly in their unions, then in communes, regions, nations
and finally in a great federation, international and universal."
In other words, "the federative Alliance of all working men's associations
. . . will constitute the commune." [Michael Bakunin: Selected
Writings, p. 206 and p. 170]
This vision of the commune was created during many later revolutions
(such as in Russia in 1905 and 1917 and Hungary in 1956). Being based
on workplaces, this form of commune has the advantage of being based
on groups of people who are naturally associated during most of the
day (Bakunin considered workplace bodies as "the natural organisation
of the masses" as they were "based on the various types of
work" which "define their actual day-to-day life" [The
Basic Bakunin, p. 139]). This would facilitate the organisation
of assemblies, discussion on social, economic and political issues
and the mandating and recalling of delegates. Moreover, it combines
political and economic power in one organisation, so ensuring that
the working class actually manages society.
This vision was stressed by later anarchist thinkers. For example,
Spanish anarchist Issac Puente thought that in towns and cities "the
part of the free municipality is played by local federation. . . Ultimate
sovereignty in the local federation of industrial unions lies with
the general assembly of all local producers." [Libertarian
Communism, p. 27] The Russian anarchist G. P. Maximoff saw the
"communal confederation" as being "constituted by thousands
of freely acting labour organisations." [The Program of Anarcho-Syndicalism,
p. 43]
Other anarchists counterpoise neighbourhood assemblies to workers'
councils. These assemblies will be general meetings open to all citizens
in every neighbourhood, town, and village, and will be the source
of and final "authority" over public policy for all levels
of confederal co-ordination. Such "town meetings" will bring
ordinary people directly into the political process and give them
an equal voice in the decisions that affect their lives. Such anarchists
point to the experience of the French Revolution of 1789 and the "sections"
of the Paris Commune as the key example of "a people governing
itself directly -- when possible -- without intermediaries, without
masters." It is argued, based on this experience, that "the
principles of anarchism . . . dated from 1789, and that they had their
origin, not in theoretical speculations, but in the deeds of
the Great French Revolution." [Peter Kropotkin, The Great French
Revolution, vol. 1, p. 210 and p. 204]
Critics of workers' councils point out that not all working class
people work in factories or workplaces. Many are parents who look
after children, for example. By basing the commune around the workplace,
such people are automatically excluded. Moreover, in most modern cities
many people do not live near where they work. It would mean that local
affairs could not be effectively discussed in a system of workers'
councils as many who take part in the debate are unaffected by the
decisions reached (this is something which the supporters of workers'
councils have noticed and argue for councils which are delegates
from both the inhabitants and the enterprises of an area).
In addition, anarchists like Murray Bookchin argue that workplace
based systems automatically generate "special interests" and
so exclude community issues. Only community assemblies can "transcend
the traditional special interests of work, workplace, status, and
property relations, and create a general interest based on
shared community problems." [Murray Bookchin, From Urbanisation
to Cities, p. 254]
However, such communities assemblies can only be valid if they can
be organised rapidly in order to make decisions and to mandate and
recall delegates. In the capitalist city, many people work far from
where they live and so such meetings have to be called for after work
or at weekends. Thus the key need is to reduce the working day/week
and to communalise industry. For this reason, many anarchists continue
to support the workers' council vision of the commune, complemented
by community assemblies for those who live in an area but do not work
in a traditional workplace (e.g. parents bring up small children,
the old, the sick and so on).
These positions are not hard and fast divisions, far from it. Puente,
for example, thought that in the countryside the dominant commune
would be "all the residents of a village or hamlet meeting in an
assembly (council) with full powers to administer local affairs."
[Op. Cit., p. 25] Kropotkin supported the soviets of the Russian
Revolution, arguing that the "idea of soviets . . . of councils
of workers and peasants . . . controlling the economic and political
life of the country is a great idea. All the more so, since it necessarily
follows that these councils should be composed of all who take part
in the production of natural wealth by their own efforts." [Kropotkin's
Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 254]
Which method, workers' councils or community assemblies, will be
used in a given community will depend on local conditions, needs and
aspirations and it is useless to draw hard and fast rules. It is likely
that some sort of combination of the two approaches will be used,
with workers' councils being complemented by community assemblies
until such time as a reduced working week and decentralisation of
urban centres will make purely community assemblies the more realistic
option. It is likely that in a fully libertarian society, community
assemblies will be the dominant communal organisation but in the period
immediately after a revolution this may not be immediately possible.
Objective conditions, rather than predictions, will be the deciding
factor. Under capitalism, anarchists pursue both forms of organisation,
arguing for community and industrial unionism in the class
struggle (see sections J.5.1 and J.5.2).
Regardless of the exact make up of the commune, they would share
identical features. They would be free associations, based upon the
self-assumed obligation of those who join them. In free association,
participation is essential simply because it is the only means
by which individuals can collectively govern themselves (and unless
they govern themselves, someone else will). "As a unique individual,"
Stirner argues, "you can assert yourself alone in association,
because the association does not own you, because you are one who
owns it or who turns it to your own advantage." The rules governing
the association aare determined by the associated and can be changed
by them (and so a vast improvement over "love it or leave")
as are the policies the association follows. Thus, the association
"does not impose itself as a spiritual power superior to my spirit.
I have no wish to become a slave to my maxims, but would rather subject
them to my ongoing criticism." [Max Stirner, No Gods, No Masters,
vol. 1, p. 17]
Thus participatory communities are freely joined and self-managed
by their members. No more division between order givers and order
takers as exist within the state or capitalist workplaces. Rather
the associated govern themselves and while the assembled people collectively
decide the rules governing their association, and are bound by them
as individuals, they are also superior to them in the sense that these
rules can always be modified or repealed (see section A.2.11 -- "Why
are most anarchists in favour of direct democracy?" -- for
more details). As can be seen, a participatory commune is new form
of social life, radically different from the state as it is decentralised,
self-governing and based upon individual autonomy and free agreement.
Thus Kropotkin:
"The representative system was organised by the bourgeoisie to
ensure their domination, and it will disappear with them. For
the new economic phase that is about to begin we must seek a
new form of political organisation, based on a principle quite
different from that of representation. The logic of events
imposes it." [Words of a Rebel, p. 125]
This "new form of political organisation has to be worked out
the moment that socialistic principles shall enter our life. And it
is self-evident that this new form will have to be more popular,
more decentralised, and nearer to the folk-mote self-government
than representative government can ever be." [Kropotkin, Kropotkin's
Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 184] He, like all anarchists, considered
the idea that socialism could be created by taking over the current
state or creating a new one as doomed to failure. Instead, he recognised
that socialism would only be built using new organisations that reflect
the spirit of socialism (such as freedom, self-government and so on).
Kropotkin, like Proudhon and Bakunin before him, therefore argued
that "[t]his was the form that the social revolution must take
-- the independent commune. . . [whose] inhabitants have decided that
they will communalise the consumption of commodities, their
exchange and their production." [Op. Cit., p. 163]
In a nutshell, a participatory community is a free association,
based upon the mass assembly of people who live in a common area,
the means by which they make the decisions that affect them, their
communities, bio-regions and the planet. Their essential task is to
provide a forum for raising public issues and deciding them. Moreover,
these assemblies will be a key way of generating a community (and
community spirit) and building and enriching social relationships
between individuals and, equally important, of developing and enriching
individuals by the very process of participation in communal affairs.
By discussing, thinking and listening to others, individuals develop
their own abilities and powers while at the same time managing their
own affairs, so ensuring that no one else does (i.e. they govern themselves
and are no longer governed from above by others). As Kropotkin argued,
self-management has an educational effect on those who practice it:
"The 'permanence' of the general assemblies of the sections
-- that is, the possibility of calling the general assembly
whenever it was wanted by the members of the section and of
discussing everything in the general assembly. . . will educate
every citizen politically. . . The section in permanence
-- the forum always open -- is the only way . . . to
assure an honest and intelligent administration." [The
Great French Revolution, vol. 1, pp. 210-1]
As well as integrating the social life of a community and encouraging
the political and social development of its members, these free communes
will also be integrated into the local ecology. Humanity would life
in harmony with nature as well as with itself:
"We can envision that their squares will be interlaced by
streams, their places of assembly surrounded by groves, their
physical contours respected and tastefully landscaped, their
soils nurtured carefully to foster plant variety for ourselves,
our domestic animals, and wherever possible the wildlife they
may support on their fringes." [Murray Bookchin, The Ecology
of Freedom, p. 344]
The commune itself would aim for a balanced mix of agriculture and
industry, as described by Peter Kropotkin in his classic work Fields,
Factories and Workshops. Thus a free commune would aim to integrate
the individual into social and communal life, rural and urban life
into a balanced whole and human life into the wider ecology. In this
way the free commune would make human habitation fully ecological,
ending the sharp and needless (and dehumanising and de-individualising)
division of human life from the rest of the planet. The commune will
be a key means of the expressing diversity within humanity and the
planet as well as improving the quality of life in society:
"The Commune . . . will be entirely devoted to improving the communal
life of the locality. Making their requests to the appropriate
Syndicates, Builders', Public Health, Transport or Power, the
inhabitants of each Commune will be able to gain all reasonable
living amenities, town planning, parks, play-grounds, trees in
the street, clinics, museums and art galleries. Giving, like the
medieval city assembly, an opportunity for any interested person
to take part in, and influence, his town's affairs and appearance,
the Commune will be a very different body from the borough council. . .
"In ancient and medieval times cities and villages expressed the different
characters of different localities and their inhabitants. In redstone,
Portland or granite, in plaster or brick, in pitch of roof, arrangements
of related buildings or patterns of slate and thatch each locality
added to the interests of travellers . . . each expressed itself
in castle, home or cathedral.
"How different is the dull, drab, or flashy ostentatious monotony
of modern England. Each town is the same. The same Woolworth's,
Odeon Cinemas, and multiple shops, the same 'council houses' or
'semi-detached villas' . . . North, South, East or West, what's
the difference, where is the change?
"With the Commune the ugliness and monotony of present town and
country life will be swept away, and each locality and region, each
person will be able to express the joy of living, by living together."
[Tom Brown, Syndicalism, p. 59]
The size of the neighbourhood assemblies will vary, but it will
probably fluctuate around some ideal size, discoverable in practice,
that will provide a viable scale of face-to-face interaction and allow
for both a variety of personal contacts and the opportunity to know
and form a personal estimation of everyone in the neighbourhood. Some
anarchists have suggested that the ideal size for a neighbourhood
assembly might be under one thousand adults. This, of course, suggests
that any town or city would itself be a confederation of assemblies
-- as was, of course, practised very effectively in Paris during the
Great French Revolution.
Such assemblies would meet regularly, at the very least monthly
(probably more often, particularly during periods which require fast
and often decision making, like a revolution), and deal with a variety
of issues. In the words of the CNT's resolution on libertarian communism:
"the foundation of this administration will be the commune.
These communes are to be autonomous and will be federated at
regional and national levels to achieve their general goals.
The right to autonomy does not preclude the duty to implement
agreements regarding collective benefits.
"[The] commune . . . without any voluntary restrictions will undertake to
adhere to whatever general norms may be agreed by majority vote
after free debate. In return, those communities which industrialisation
. . . may agree upon a different model of co-existence and will
be entitled to an autonomous administration released from the general
commitments . . .
". . . the commune is to be autonomous and confederated with the
other communes . . . the commune will have the duty to concern itself
with whatever may be of interest to the individual.
"It will have to oversee organising, running and beautification
of the settlement. It will see that its inhabitants; are housed
and that items and products be made available to them by the producers'
unions or associations.
"Similarly, it is concern itself with hygiene, the keeping of
communal statistics and with collective requirements such as education,
health services and with the maintenance and improvement of local
means of communication.
"It will orchestrate relations with other communes and will take
care to stimulate all artistic and cultural pursuits.
"So that this mission may be properly fulfilled, a communal council
is to be appointed . . . None of these posts will carry any executive
or bureaucratic powers . . . [its members] will perform their role
as producers coming together in session at the close of the day's
work to discuss the detailed items which may not require the endorsement
of communal assemblies.
"Assemblies are to be summoned as often as required by communal
interests, upon the request of the communal council or according
to the wishes of the inhabitants of each commune . . .
"The inhabitants of a commune are to debate among themselves their
internal problems . . . Federations are to deliberate over major
problems affecting a country or province and all communes are to
be represented at their reunions and assemblies, thereby enabling
their delegates to convey the democratic viewpoint of their respective
communes . . . every commune which is implicated will have its right
to have its say . . . On matters of a regional nature, it is the
duty of the regional federation to implement agreements . . . So
the starting point is the individual, moving on through the commune,
to the federation and right on up finally to the confederation."
[quoted by Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution,
vol. 1, pp. 106-7]
Thus the communal assembly discusses that which affects the community
and those within it. As these local community associations, will be
members of larger communal bodies, the communal assembly will also
discuss issues which affect wider areas, as indicated, and mandate
their delegates to discuss them at confederation assemblies (see next
section). This system, we must note, was applied with great success
during the Spanish revolution (see section I.8)
and so cannot be dismissed as wishful thinking.
However, of course, the actual framework of a free society will
be worked out in practice. As Bakunin correctly argued, society "can,
and must, organise itself in a different fashion [than what came before],
but not from top to bottom and according to an ideal plan" [Michael
Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 205] What does seem likely is that
confederations of communes will be required. We turn to this in the
next section.
Since not all issues are local, the neighbourhood and community assemblies
will also elect mandated and recallable delegates to the larger-scale
units of self-government in order to address issues affecting larger
areas, such as urban districts, the city or town as a whole, the county,
the bio-region, and ultimately the entire planet. Thus the assemblies
will confederate at several levels in order to develop and co-ordinate
common policies to deal with common problems.
In the words of the CNT's resolution on libertarian communism:
"The inhabitants of a commune are to debate among themselves their
internal problems . . . Federations are to deliberate over major
problems affecting a country or province and all communes are to be
represented at their reunions and assemblies, thereby enabling
their delegates to convey the democratic viewpoint of their
respective communes.
"If, say, roads have to be built to link villages of a county or any matter
arises to do with transportation and exchange of produce between
agricultural and industrial counties, then naturally every commune
which is implicated will have its right to have its say.
"On matters of a regional nature, it is the duty of the regional
federation to implement agreements which will represent the sovereign
will of all the region's inhabitants. So the starting point is the
individual, moving on through the commune, to the federation and
right on up finally to the confederation.
"Similarly, discussion of all problems of a national nature shall
flow a like pattern . . . " [quoted by Jose Peirats, The
CNT in the Spanish Revolution, p. 107]
In other words, the commune "cannot any longer acknowledge any
superior: that, above it, there cannot be anything, save the interests
of the Federation, freely embraced by itself in concert with other
Communes." [Kropotkin, No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p.
259]
Federalism is applicable at all levels of society. As Kropotkin
pointed out, anarchists "understand that if no central government
was needed to rule the independent communes, if national government
is thrown overboard and national unity is obtained by free federation,
then a central municipal government becomes equally useless
and noxious. The same federative principle would do within the commune."
[Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, pp. 163-164] Thus the
whole of society would be a free federation, from the local community
right up to the global level. And this free federation would be based
squarely on the autonomy and self-government of local groups. With
federalism, co-operation replaces coercion.
This need for co-operation does not imply a centralised body. To
exercise your autonomy by joining self-managing organisations and,
therefore, agreeing to abide by the decisions you help make is not
a denial of that autonomy (unlike joining a hierarchical structure,
where you forsake autonomy within the organisation). In a centralised
system, we must stress, power rests at the top and the role
of those below is simply to obey (it matters not if those with the
power are elected or not, the principle is the same). In a federal
system, power is not delegated into the hands of a few (obviously
a "federal" government or state is a centralised system). Decisions
in a federal system are made at the base of the organisation and flow
upwards so ensuring that power remains decentralised in the hands
of all. Working together to solve common problems and organise common
efforts to reach common goals is not centralisation and those who
confuse the two make a serious error -- they fail to understand the
different relations of authority each generates and confuse obedience
with co-operation.
As in the economic federation of collectives, the lower levels will
control the higher, thus eliminating the current pre-emptive powers
of centralised government hierarchies. Delegates to higher-level co-ordinating
councils or conferences will be instructed, at every level of confederation,
by the assemblies they represent, on how to deal with any issue. These
instructions will be binding, committing delegates to a framework
of policies within which they must act and providing for their recall
and the nullification of their decisions if they fail to carry out
their mandates. Delegates may be selected by election and/or sortition
(i.e. random selection by lot, as for jury duty currently).
Most anarchists recognise that there will be a need for "public
officials" with specific tasks within the social confederation.
We stress the word "tasks" as "powers" would not be
the best word to describe their activities simply because their work
is essentially administrative in nature. For example, an individual
or a group of individuals may be elected to look into alternative
power supplies for a community and report back on what they discover.
They cannot impose their decision onto the community as they
do not have the power to do so. They simply present their findings
to the body which had mandated them. These findings are not
a law which the electors are required to follow, but a series of suggestions
and information from which the electors chose what they think is best.
Or, to use another example, someone may be elected to overlook the
installation of a selected power supply but the decision on what power
supply to use and which specific project to implement has been decided
upon by the whole community. Similarly with any delegate elected to
a confederal council. Such a delegate will have their decisions mandated
by their electors and are subject to recall by those electors. If
such a delegate starts to abuse their position or even vote in ways
opposed to by the communal assembly then they would quickly be recalled
and replaced.
As such a person is an elected delegate of the community, they are
a "public official" in the broadest sense of the word but that
does not mean that they have power or authority. Essentially they
are an agent of the local community who is controlled by, and accountable
to, that community. Clearly, such "officials" are unlike politicians.
They do not, and cannot, make policy decisions on behalf of those
who elected them, and so they do not have governmental power over
those who elected them. By this method the "officials" remain
the servants of the public and are not given power to make decisions
for people. In addition, these "officials" will be rotated
frequently to prevent a professionalisation of politics and the problem
of politicians being largely on their own once elected. And, of course,
they will continue to work and live with those who elected them and
receive no special privileges due to their election (in terms of more
income, better housing, and so on).
Therefore, such "public officials" would be under the strict
control of the organisations that elected them to administration posts.
But, as Kropotkin argued, the general assembly of the community "in
permanence - the forum always open -- is the only way . . .to assure
an honest and intelligent administration . . . [and is based upon]
distrust of all executive powers." [The Great French
Revolution Vol. 1, p. 211]
As Murray Bookchin argues, a "confederalist view involves a clear
distinction between policy making and the co-ordination and execution
of adopted policies. Policy making is exclusively the right of popular
community assemblies based on the practices of participatory democracy.
Administration and co-ordination are the responsibility of confederal
councils, which become the means for interlinking villages, towns,
neighbourhoods, and cities into confederal networks. Power flows from
the bottom up instead of from the top down, and in confederations,
the flow of power from the bottom up diminishes with the scope of
the federal council ranging territorially from localities to regions
and from regions to ever-broader territorial areas." [From
Urbanisation to Cities, p. 253]
Thus the people will have the final word on policy, which is the
essence of self-government, and each citizen will have his or her
turn to participate in the co-ordination of public affairs. In other
words, the "legislative branch" of self-government will be
the people themselves organised in their community assemblies and
their confederal co-ordinating councils, with the "executive branch"
(public officials) limited to implementing policy formulated by the
legislative branch, that is, by the people.
Besides rotation of public officials, means to ensure the accountability
of such officials to the people will include a wider use of elections
and sortitions, open access to proceedings and records of "executive"
activities by computer or direct inspection, the right of citizen
assemblies to mandate delegates to higher-level confederal meetings,
recall their officials, and revoke their decisions, and the creation
of accountability boards, elected or selected by lot (as for jury
duty), for each important administrative branch, from local to national.
Thus confederations of communes are required to co-ordinate joint
activity and discuss common issues and interests. Confederation is
also required to protect individual, community and social freedom.
The current means of co-ordinating wide scale activity -- centralism
via the state -- is a threat to freedom as, to quote Proudhon, "the
citizen divests himself of sovereignty, the town and the Department
and province above it, absorbed by central authority, are no longer
anything but agencies under direct ministerial control." He continues:
"The Consequences soon make themselves felt: the citizen and the
town are deprived of all dignity, the state's depredations multiply,
and the burden on the taxpayer increases in proportion. It is no
longer the government that is made for the people; it is the people
who are made for the government. Power invades everything, dominates
everything, absorbs everything. . ." [The Principle of Federation,
p. 59]
Moreover, "[t]he principle of political centralism is openly
opposed to all laws of social progress and of natural evolution. It
lies in the nature of things that every cultural advance is first
achieved within a small group and only gradually finds adoption by
society as a whole. Therefore, political decentralisation is the best
guaranty for the unrestricted possibilities of new experiments. For
such an environment each community is given the opportunity to carry
through the things which it is capable of accomplishing itself without
imposing them on others. Practical experimentation is the parent of
ever development in society. So long as each distinct is capable of
effecting the changes within its own sphere which its citizens deem
necessary, the example of each becomes a fructifying influence on
the other parts of the community since they will have the chance to
weigh the advantages accruing from them without being forced to adopt
them if they are not convinced of their usefulness. The result is
that progressive communities serve the others as models, a result
justified by the natural evolution of things." [Rudolf Rocker,
Pioneers of American Freedom, pp. 16-7]
The contrast with centralisation of the state could not be more
clear. As Rocker argues, "[i]n a strongly centralised state, the
situation is entirely reversed and the best system of representation
can do nothing to change that. The representatives of a certain district
may have the overwhelming majority of a certain district on his [or
her] side, but in the legislative assembly of the central state, he
[or she] will remain in the minority, for it lies in the nature of
things that in such a body not the intellectually most active but
the most backward districts represent the majority. Since the individual
district has indeed the right to give expression of its opinion, but
can effect no changes without the consent of the central government,
the most progressive districts will be condemned to stagnate while
the most backward districts will set the norm." [Op. Cit.,
p. 17]
Little wonder anarchists have always stressed what Kropotkin termed
"local action" and considered the libertarian social revolution
as "proceed[ing] by proclaiming independent Communes which Communes
will endeavour to accomplish the economic transformation within .
. . their respective surroundings." [Peter Kropotkin, Act For
Yourselves, p. 43] Thus the advanced communities will inspire
the rest to follow them by showing them a practical example of what
is possible. Only decentralisation and confederation can promote the
freedom and resulting social experimentation which will ensure social
progress and make society a good place to live.
Moreover, confederation is required to maximise self-management.
As Rocker explains, "[i]n a smaller community, it is far easier
for individuals to observe the political scene and become acquainted
with the issues which have to be resolved. This is quite impossible
for a representative in a centralised government. Neither the single
citizen nor his [or her] representative is completely or even approximately
to supervise the huge clockwork of the central state machine. The
deputy is forced daily to make decisions about things of which he
[or she] has no personal knowledge and for the appraisal of which
he must therefore depend on others [i.e. bureaucrats and lobbyists].
That such a system necessarily leads to serious errors and mistakes
is self-evident. And since the citizen for the same reason is not
able to inspect and criticise the conduct of his representative, the
class of professional politicians is given added opportunity to fish
in troubled waters." [Op. Cit., p. 17-18]
In other words, confederations are required to protect society and
the individual against the dangers of centralisation. As Bakunin stressed,
there are two ways of organising society, "as it is today, from
high to low and from the centre to circumference by means of enforced
unity and concentration" and the way of the future, by federalism
"starting with the free individual, the free association and the
autonomous commune, from low to high and from circumference to centre,
by means of free federation." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings,
p. 88] In other words, "the organisation of society from the bottom
up." [The Basic Bakunin, p. 131]
Thus confederations of participatory communities are required to
co-ordinate joint activities, allow social experimentation and protect
the distinctiveness, dignity, freedom and self-management of communities
and so society as a whole. This is why "socialism is federalist"
and "true federalism, the political organisation of socialism,
will be attained only when these popular grass-roots institutions
[namely, "communes, industrial and agricultural associations"]
are organised in progressive stages from the bottom up." [Bakunin
on Anarchism, p. 402]
This can only be worked out in practice. In general, it would be save to say
that confederations would be needed on a wide scale, including in
towns and cities. No village, town or city could be self-sufficient
nor would desire to be -- communication and links with other places
are part and parcel of live and anarchists have no desire to retreat
back into an isolated form of localism:
"No community can hope to achieve economic autarchy, nor
should it try to do so. Economically, the wide range of
resources that are needed to make many of our widely used
goods preclude self-enclosed insularity and parochialism.
Far from being a liability, this interdependence among
communities and regions can well be regarded as an asset
-- culturally as well as politically . . . Divested
of the cultural cross-fertilisation that is often a
product of economic intercourse, the municipality tends
to shrink into itself and disappear into its own civic
privatism. Shared needs and resources imply the existence
of sharing and, with sharing, communication, rejuvenation
by new ideas, and a wider social horizon that yields a
wider sensibility to new experiences." [Murray Bookchin,
From Urbanisation to Cities, p. 237]
This means that the scale and level of the confederations created
by the communes will be varied and extensive. It would be hard to
generalise about them, particularly as different confederations will
exist for different tasks and interests. Moreover, any system of communes
would start off based on the existing villages, towns and cities of
capitalism. That is unavoidable and will, of course, help determine
the initial scale and level of confederations.
It seems likely that the scale of the confederation will be dependent
on the inhabited area in question. A village, for example, would be
based on one assembly and (minimally) be part of a local confederation
covering all the villages nearby. In turn, this local confederation
would be part of a district confederation, and so on up to (ultimately)
a continental and world scale. Needless to say, the higher the confederation
the less often it would meet and the less it would have to consider
in terms of issues to decide. On such a level, only the most general
issues and decisions could be reached (in effect, only guidelines
which the member confederations would apply as they saw fit).
In urban areas, the town or city would have to be broken down into
confederations and these confederations would constitute the town
or city assembly of delegates. Given a huge city like London, New
York or Mexico City it would be impossible to organise in any other
way. Smaller towns would probably be able to have simpler confederations.
We must stress hear that few, if any, anarchists consider it desirable
to have huge cities in a free society and one of the major tasks of
social transformation will be to break the metropolis into smaller
units, integrated with the local environment. However, a social revolution
will take place in these vast metropolises and so we have to take
them into account in our discussion.
Thus the issue of size would determine when a new level of confederation
would be needed. A town or village of several thousand people could
be organised around the basic level of the commune and it may be that
a libertarian socialist society would probably form another level
of confederation once this level has been reached. Such units of confederation
would, as noted above, include urban districts within today's large
cities, small cities, and rural districts composed of several nearby
towns. The next level of confederation would, we can imagine, be dependent
on the number of delegates required. After a certain number, the confederation
assembly may became difficult to manage, so implying that another
level of confederation is required. This would, undoubtedly, be the
base for determining the scale and level of confederation, ensuring
that any confederal assembly can actually manage its activities and
remain under the control of lower levels.
Combined with this consideration, we must also raise the issue of
economies of scale. A given level of confederation may be required
to make certain social and economic services efficient (we are thinking
of economies of scale for such social needs as universities, hospitals,
and cultural institutions). While every commune may have a doctor,
nursery, local communal stores and small-scale workplaces, not all
can have a university, hospital, factories and so forth. These would
be organised on a wider level, so necessitating the appropriate confederation
to exist to manage them.
However, face-to-face meetings of the whole population are impractical
at this size. Therefore, the decision making body at this level would
be the confederal council, which would consist of mandated,
recallable, and rotating delegates from the neighbourhood assemblies.
These delegates would co-ordinate policies which have been discussed
and voted on by the neighbourhood assemblies, with the votes being
summed across the district to determine district policy by majority
rule. The issues to be discussed by these confederal meetings/assemblies
would be proposed by local communes, the confederal council would
collate these proposals and submit them to the other communes in the
confederation for discussion. Thus the flow of decision making would
be from the bottom up, with the "lowest" bodies having the
most power, particularly the power to formulate, suggest, correct
and, if need be, reject decisions made at "higher" levels in
the confederation.
Ties between bioregions or larger territories based on the distribution
of such things as geographically concentrated mineral deposits, climate
dependent crops, and production facilities that are most efficient
when concentrated in one area will unite communities confederally
on the basis of common material needs as well as values. At the bioregional
and higher levels of confederation, councils of mandated, recallable,
and rotating delegates will co-ordinate policies at those levels,
but such policies will still be subject to approval by the neighbourhood
and community assemblies through their right to recall their delegates
and revoke their decisions.
In the final analysis, libertarian socialism cannot function optimally
-- and indeed may be fatally undermined -- unless the present system
of competing nation-states is replaced by a co-operative system of
decentralised bioregions of self-governing communities confederated
on a global scale. For, if a libertarian socialist nation is forced
to compete in the global market for scarce raw materials and hard
cash with which to buy them, the problems of "petty-bourgeois co-operativism,"
previously noted, will have merely been displaced to a higher level
of organisation. That is, instead of individual co-operatives acting
as collective capitalists and competing against each other in the
national market for profits, raw materials, etc., the nation or community
as a whole will become the "collective capitalist" and
compete against other nations in the global capitalist market -- a
situation that is bound to reintroduce many problems, e.g. militarism,
imperialism, and alienating/disempowering measures in the workplace,
justified in the name of "efficiency" and "global competitiveness."
To some extent such problems can be reduced in the revolutionary
period by achieving self-sufficiency within bioregions as Kropotkin
argued (see section I.3.8). This should
be easier to achieve in a libertarian socialist economy as artificial
needs are not manufactured by massive advertising campaigns of giant
profit-seeking corporations. As a social revolution would, as Kropotkin
predicted, suffer (initially) from isolation and disrupted trade patterns
such a policy would have to be applied anyway and so interbioregional
trade would be naturally be limited to other members of the libertarian
socialist federation to a large degree. However, to eliminate the
problem completely, anarchists envision a global council of bioregional
delegates to co-ordinate global co-operation based on policies formulated
and approved at the grassroots by the confederal principles outlined
above. As noted above, most anarchists think that the "higher"
the confederation, the more its decisions will be guidelines rather
than anything else.
In summary, the size and scale of confederations will depend on
practical considerations, based on what people found were optimal
sizes for their neighbourhood assemblies and the needs of co-operation
between them, towns, cities, regions and so on. We cannot, and have
no wish, to predict the development of a free society. Therefore the
scale and levels of confederation will be decided by those actually
creating an anarchist world. All we can do is make a few suggestions
of what seems likely.
Anarchists have little doubt that the confederal structure will be an efficient
means of decision making and will not be bogged down in endless meetings.
We have various reasons for thinking this.
Firstly, we doubt that a free society will spend all its time in
assemblies or organising confederal conferences. Certain questions
are more important than others and few anarchists desire to spend
all their time in meetings. The aim of a free society is to allow
individuals to express their desires and wants freely -- they cannot
do that if they are continually at meetings (or preparing for them).
So while communal and confederal assemblies will play an important
role in a free society, do not think that they will be occurring all
the time or that anarchists desire to make meetings the focal point
of individual life. Far from it!
Thus communal assemblies may occur, say, once a week, or fortnightly
or monthly in order to discuss truly important issues. There would
be no real desire to meet continuously to discuss every issue under
the sun and few people would tolerate this occurring. This would mean
that such meetings would current regularly and when important issues
needed to be discussed, not continuously (although, if required,
continuous assembly or daily meetings may have to be organised in
emergency situations but this would be rare).
Secondly, it is extremely doubtful that a free people would desire
waste vast amounts of time at such meetings. While important and essential,
communal and confederal meetings would be functional in the extreme
and not forums for hot air. It would be the case that those involved
in such meetings would quickly make their feelings known to time wasters
and those who like the sound of their own voices. Thus Cornelius Castoriadis:
"It might be claimed that the problem of numbers remains
and that people never would be able to express themselves
in a reasonable amount of time. This is not a valid
argument. There would rarely be an assembly over twenty
people where everyone would want to speak, for the very
good reason that when there is something to be decided
upon there are not an infinite number of options or an
infinite number of arguments. In unhampered rank-and-file
workers' gatherings (convened, for instance, to decide
on a strike) there have never been 'too many' speeches.
The two or three fundamental opinions having been
voiced, and various arguments exchanged, a decision
is soon reached.
"The length of speeches, moreover, often varies inversely with the weight
of their content. Russian leaders sometimes talk on for four hours
at Party Congresses without saying anything . . . For an account
of the laconicism of revolutionary assemblies, see Trotsky's account
of the Petrograd soviet of 1905 -- or accounts of the meetings of
factory representatives in Budapest in 1956." [Political
and Social Writings, vol. 2, pp. 144-5]
As we shall see below, this was definitely the case during the Spanish
Revolution as well.
Thirdly, as these assemblies and congresses are concerned purely
with joint activity and co-ordination, it is likely that they will
not be called very often. Different associations, syndicates and co-operatives
have a functional need for co-operation and so would meet more regularly
and take action on practical activity which affects a specific section
of a community or group of communities. Not every issue that a member
of a community is interested in is necessarily best discussed at a
meeting of all members of a community or at a confederal conference.
In other words, communal assemblies and conferences will have specific,
well defined agendas, and so there is little danger of "politics"
taking up everyone's time. Hence, far from discussing abstract laws
and pointless motions which no one actually knows much about, the
issues discussed in these conferences will be on specific issues which
are important to those involved. In addition, the standard procedure
may be to elect a sub-group to investigate an issue and report back
at a later stage with recommendations. The conference can change,
accept, or reject any proposals.
As Kropotkin argued, anarchy would be based on "free agreement,
by exchange of letters and proposals, and by congresses at which delegates
met to discuss well specified points, and to come to an agreement
about them, but not to make laws. After the congress was over, the
delegates [would return] . . . not with a law, but with the draft
of a contract to be accepted or rejected." [Conquest of Bread,
p. 131]
By reducing conferences to functional bodies based on concrete issues,
the problems of endless discussions can be reduced, if not totally
eliminated. In addition, as functional groups would exist outside
of these communal confederations (for example, industrial collectives
would organise conferences about their industry with invited participants
from consumer groups), there would be a limited agenda in most communal
get-togethers.
The most important issues would be to agree on the guidelines for
industrial activity, communal investment (e.g. houses, hospitals,
etc.) and overall co-ordination of large scale communal activities.
In this way everyone would be part of the commonwealth, deciding on
how resources would be used to maximise human well-being and ecological
survival. The problems associated with "the tyranny of small decisions"
would be overcome without undermining individual freedom. (In fact,
a healthy community would enrich and develop individuality by encouraging
independent and critical thought, social interaction, and empowering
social institutions based on self-management).
Is such a system fantasy? Given that such a system has existed and
worked at various times, we can safely argue that it is not. Obviously
we cannot cover every example, so we point to just two -- revolutionary
Paris and Spain.
As Murray Bookchin points out, Paris "in the late eighteenth
century was, by the standards of that time, one of the largest and
economically most complex cities in Europe: its population approximated
a million people . . . Yet in 1793, at the height of the French Revolution,
the city was managed institutionally almost entirely by [48]
citizen assemblies. . . and its affairs were co-ordinated by the Commune
.. . and often, in fact, by the assemblies themselves, or sections
as they were called, which established their own interconnections
without recourse to the Commune." [Society and Nature,
no. 5, p. 96]
Here is his account of how communal self-government worked in practice:
"What, then, were these little-know forty-eight sections of
Paris . . .How were they organised? And how did they function?
"Ideologically, the sectionnaires (as their members were called) believed
primarily in sovereignty of the people. This concept of popular
sovereignty, as Albert Soboul observes, was for them 'not an abstraction,
but the concrete reality of the people united in sectional assemblies
and exercising all their rights.' It was in their eyes an inalienable
right, or, as the section de la Cite declared in November 1792,
'every man who assumes to have sovereignty [over others] will be
regarded as a tyrant, usurper of public liberty and worthy of death.'
"Sovereignty, in effect, was to be enjoyed by all citizens,
not pre-empted by 'representatives' . . . The radical democrats
of 1793 thus assumed that every adult was, to one degree or another,
competent to participate in management public affairs. Thus, each
section . . . was structured around a face-to-face democracy:
basically a general assembly of the people that formed the most
important deliberative body of a section, and served as the incarnation
of popular power in a given part of the city . . . each elected
six deputies to the Commune, presumably for the pursue merely of
co-ordinating all the sections in the city of Paris.
"Each section also had its own various administrative committees,
whose members were also recruited from the general assembly."
[The Third Revolution, vol. 1, p. 319]
Little wonder Kropotkin argued that these "sections" showed
"the principles of anarchism, expressed some years later in England
by W. Godwin, . . . had their origin, not in theoretical speculations,
but in the deeds of the Great French Revolution" [The
Great French Revolution, vol. 1, p. 204]
Communal self-government was also practised, and on a far wider
scale, in revolutionary Spain. All across Republican Spain, workers
and peasants formed communes and federations of communes (see section
I.8 for fuller details). As Gaston Leval summarises the experience:
"There was, in the organisation set in motion by the Spanish
Revolution and by the libertarian movement, which was its
mainspring, a structuring from the bottom to the top, which
corresponds to a real federation and true democracy . . . the
controlling and co-ordinating Comites, clearly indispensable, do
not go outside the organisation that has chosen them, they remain
in their midst, always controllable by and accessible to the
members. If any individuals contradict by their actions their
mandates, it is possible to call them to order, to reprimand
them, to replace them. It is only by and in such a system that
the 'majority lays down the law.'
"The syndical assemblies were the expression and the practice of libertarian
democracy, a democracy having nothing in common with the democracy
of Athens where the citizens discussed and disputed for days on
end on the Agora; where factions, clan rivalries, ambitions, personalities
conflicted, where, in view of the social inequalities precious time
was lost in interminable wrangles. Here a modern Aristophenes would
have had no reason to write the equivalent of The Clouds.
"Normally those periodic meetings would not last more than a few
hours. They dealt with concrete, precise subjects concretely and
precisely. And all who had something to say could express themselves.
The Comite presented the new problems that had arisen since the
previous assembly, the results obtained by the application of such
and such a resolution . . relations with other syndicates, production
returns from the various workshops or factories. All this was the
subject of reports and discussion. Then the assembly would nominate
the commissions, the members of these commissions discussed between
themselves what solutions to adopt, if there was disagreement, a
majority report and a minority report would be prepared.
"This took place in all the syndicates throughout Spain,
in all trades and all industries, in assemblies which,
in Barcelona, from the very beginnings of our movement brought together
hundreds or thousands of workers depending on the strength of the
organisations. So much so that the awareness of the duties, responsibilities
of each spread all the time to a determining and decisive degree.
. .
"The practice of this democracy also extended to the agricultural
regions . . . the decision to nominate a local management Comite
for the villages was taken by general meetings of the inhabitants
of villages, how the delegates in the different essential tasks
which demanded an indispensable co-ordination of activities were
proposed and elected by the whole assembled population. But it is
worth adding and underlining that in all the collectivised villages
and all the partially collectivised villages, in the 400 Collectives
in Aragon, in the 900 in the Levante region, in the 300 in the Castilian
region, to mention only the large groupings . . . the population
was called together weekly, fortnightly or monthly and kept fully
informed of everything concerning the commonweal.
"This writer was present at a number of these assemblies in Aragon,
where the reports on the various questions making up the agenda
allowed the inhabitants to know, to so understand, and to feel so
mentally integrated in society, to so participate in the management
of public affairs, in the responsibilities, that the recriminations,
the tensions which always occur when the power of decision is entrusted
to a few individuals, be they democratically elected without the
possibility of objecting, did not happen there. The assemblies were
public, the objections, the proposals publicly discussed, everybody
being free, as in the syndical assemblies, to participate in the
discussions, to criticise, propose, etc. Democracy extended to the
whole of social life." [Collectives in the Spanish Revolution,
pp. 205-7]
These collectives organised federations embracing thousands of communes
and workplaces, whole branches of industry, hundreds of thousands
of people and whole regions of Spain.
In other words, it is possible. It has worked. With
the massive improvements in communication technology it is even more
viable than before. Whether or not we reach such a self-managed society
depends on whether we desire to be free or not.
No. As we have seen in section B.2, a state can be
defined both by its structure and its function. As far as structure
is concerned, a state involves the politico-military and economic
domination of a certain geographical territory by a ruling elite,
based on the delegation of power into the hands of the few, resulting
in hierarchy (centralised authority). As Kropotkin argued, "the
word 'State' . . . should be reserved for those societies with the
hierarchical system and centralisation." [Ethics, p. 317f]
In a system of federated participatory communities, however, there
is no ruling elite, and thus no hierarchy, because power is retained
by the lowest-level units of confederation through their use of direct
democracy and mandated, rotating, and recallable delegates to meetings
of higher-level confederal bodies. This eliminates the problem in
"representative" democratic systems of the delegation of power leading
to the elected officials becoming isolated from and beyond the control
of the mass of people who elected them. As Kropotkin pointed out,
an anarchist society would make decisions by "means of congresses,
composed of delegates, who discuss among themselves, and submit proposals,
not laws, to their constituents", and so is based on self-government,
not representative government (i.e. statism). [The Conquest
of Bread, p. 135]
In addition, in representative democracy, elected officials who
must make decisions on a wide range of issues inevitably gather an
unelected bureaucracy around them to aid in their decision making,
and because of its control of information and its permanency, this
bureaucracy soon has more power than the elected officials (who themselves
have more power than the people). In the system we have sketched,
policy proposals formulated by higher-level confederal bodies would
often be presented to the grassroots political units for discussion
and voting (though the grassroots units could also formulate policy
proposals directly), and these higher-level bodies would often need
to consult experts in formulating such proposals. But these experts
would not be retained as a permanent bureaucracy, and all information
provided by them would be available to the lower-level units to aid
in their decision making, thus eliminating the control of information
on which bureaucratic power is based.
Perhaps it will be objected that communal decision making is just
a form of "statism" based on direct, as opposed to representative,
democracy -- "statist" because the individual is still be subject
to the rules of the majority and so is not free. This objection, however,
confuses statism with free agreement (i.e. co-operation). Since participatory
communities, like productive syndicates, are voluntary associations,
the decisions they make are based on self-assumed obligations (see
section A.2.11 -- "Why are most anarchists
in favour of direct democracy?"), and dissenters can leave
the association if they so desire. Thus communes are no more "statist"
than the act of promising and keeping ones word.
In addition, in a free society, dissent and direct action can be
used by minorities to press their case (or defend their freedom) as
well as debate. As Carole Pateman argues, "[p]olitical disobedience
is merely one possible expression of the active citizenship on which
a self-managing democracy is based." [The Problem of Political
Obligation, p. 162] In this way, individual liberty can be protected
in a communal system and society enriched by opposition, confrontation
and dissent.
Without self-management and minority dissent, society would become
an ideological cemetery which would stifle ideas and individuals as
these thrives on discussion ("those who will be able to create
in their mutual relations a movement and a life based on the principles
of free understanding . . . will understand that variety, conflict
even, is life and that uniformity is death" [Kropotkin, Kropotkin's
Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 143]). Therefore it is likely that
a society based on voluntary agreements and self-management would,
out of interpersonal empathy and self-interest, create a society that
encouraged individuality and respect for minorities.
Therefore, a commune's participatory nature is the opposite of statism.
April Carter, in Authority and Democracy agrees. She states
that "commitment to direct democracy or anarchy in the socio-political
sphere is incompatible with political authority" and that the
"only authority that can exist in a direct democracy is the collective
'authority' vested in the body politic . . . it is doubtful if authority
can be created by a group of equals who reach decisions be a process
of mutual persuasion." [p. 69 and p. 380] Which echoes, we must
note, Proudhon's comment that "the true meaning of the word 'democracy'"
was the "dismissal of government." [No Gods, No Masters,
vol. 1, p. 42] Bakunin argued that when the "whole people govern"
then "there will be no one to be governed. It means that there
will be no government, no State." [The Political Philosophy
of Bakunin, p. 287] Malatesta, decades later, made the same point
-- "government by everybody is no longer government in the authoritarian,
historical and practical sense of the word." [No Gods, No Masters,
vol. 2, p. 38] And, of course, Kropotkin argued that by means of the
directly democratic sections of the French Revolution the masses "practic[ed]
what was to be described later as Direct Self-Government" and
expressed "the principles of anarchism." [The Great French
Revolution, vol. 1, p. 200 and p. 204]
Anarchists assert that individuals and the institutions they create
cannot be considered in isolation. Authoritarian institutions will
create individuals who have a servile nature, who cannot govern themselves.
Anarchists, therefore, consider it common sense that individuals,
in order to be free, must have take part in determining the
general agreements they make with their neighbours which give form
to their communities. Otherwise, a free society could not exist and
individuals would be subject to rules others make for them
(following orders is hardly libertarian). Therefore, anarchists recognise
the social nature of humanity and the fact any society based on contracts
(like capitalism) will be marked by authority, injustice and inequality,
not freedom. As Bookchin points out, "[t]o speak of 'The
Individual' apart from its social roots is as meaningless as to speak
of a society that contains no people or institutions." ["Communalism:
The Democratic Dimension of Anarchism", Society and Nature
no. 8, p. 15]
Society cannot be avoided and "[u]nless everyone is to be psychologically
homogeneous and society's interests so uniform in character that dissent
is simply meaningless, there must be room for conflicting proposals,
discussion, rational explication and majority decisions - in short,
democracy." [Bookchin, Op. Cit., pp. 15-16] Those who reject
democracy in the name of liberty (such as many supporters of capitalism
claim to do) usually also see the need for laws and hierarchical authority
(particularly in the workplace). This is unsurprising, as such authority
is the only means left by which collective activity can be co-ordinated
if "democracy" (i.e. self-management) is rejected (usually
as "statist", which is ironic as the resulting institutions,
such as a capitalist company, are far more statist than self-managed
ones).
However, it should be noted that communities can expel individuals
or groups of individuals who constantly hinder community decisions.
As Malatesta argued, "for if it is unjust that the majority should
oppress the minority, the contrary would be quite as unjust; and if
the minority has a right to rebel, the majority has a right to defend
itself . . . it is true that this solution is not completely satisfactory.
The individuals put out of the association would be deprived of many
social advantages, which an isolated person or group must do without,
because they can only be procured by the co-operation of a great number
of human beings. But what would you have? These malcontents cannot
fairly demand that the wishes of many others should be sacrificed
for their sakes." [A Talk about Anarchist-Communism, p.
29]
Nevertheless, such occurrences would be rare (for reasons discussed
in section I.5.6), and their possibility
merely indicates that free association also means the freedom not
to associate. This a very important freedom for both the majority
and the minority, and must be defended. However, as an isolated life
is impossible, the need for communal associations is essential. It
is only by living together in a supportive community can individuality
be encouraged and developed along with individual freedom. However,
anarchists are aware that not everyone is a social animal and that
there are times that people like to withdraw into their own personal
space. Thus our support for free association and federalism along
with solidarity, community and self-management.
Lastly, that these communities and confederations are not just states
with new names in indicated by two more considerations. Firstly, in
regard to the activities of the confederal conferences, it is clear
that they would not be passing laws on personal behaviour or
ethics, i.e. not legislating to restrict the liberty of those who
live in these communities they represent. For example, a community
is unlikely to pass laws outlawing homosexuality or censoring the
press, for reasons discussed in the next
section. Hence they would not be "law-making bodies" in
the modern sense of the term, and thus not statist. Secondly, these
confederations have no means to enforce their decisions. In other
words, if a confederal congress makes a decision, it has no means
to force people to act or not act in a certain way. We can imagine
that there will be ethical reasons why participants will not act in
ways to oppose joint activity -- as they took part in the decision
making process they would be considered childish if they reject the
final decision because it did not go in their favour. Moreover, they
would also have to face the reaction of those who also took part in
the decision making process. It would be likely that those who ignored
such decisions (or actively hindered them) would soon face non-violent
direct action in the form of non-co-operation, shunning, boycotting
and so on.
So, far from being new states by which one section of a community
imposes its ethical standards on another, the anarchist commune is
just a public forum. In this forum, issues of community interest (for
example, management of the commons, control of communalised economic
activity, and so forth) are discussed and policy agreed upon. In addition,
interests beyond a local area are also discussed and delegates for
confederal conferences are mandated with the wishes of the community.
Hence, administration of things replaces government of people, with
the community of communities existing to ensure that the interests
of all are managed by all and that liberty, justice and equality are
more than just ideals.
For these reasons, a libertarian-socialist society would not create
a new state as far as structure goes. But what about in the area of
function?
As noted in section B.2.1, the function
of the state is to enable the ruling elite to exploit subordinate
social strata, i.e. to derive an economic surplus from them, which
it does by protecting certain economic monopolies from which the elite
derives its wealth, and so its power. But this function is completely
eliminated by the economic structure of anarchist society, which,
by abolishing private property, makes it impossible for a privileged
elite to form, let alone exploit "subordinate strata" (which
will not exist, as no one is subordinate in power to anyone else).
In other words, by placing the control of productive resources in
the hands of the workers councils and community assemblies, every
worker is given free access to the means of production that he or
she needs to earn a living. Hence no one will be forced to pay usury
(i.e. a use-fee) in the form of appropriated surplus value (profits)
to an elite class that monopolises the means of production. In short,
without private property, the state loses its reason for existence.
>I.5.6 Won't there be a danger of a "tyranny of the majority" under libertarian socialism?
While the "tyranny of the majority" objection does contain an important
point, it is often raised for self-serving reasons. This is because
those who raised the issue (for example, creators of the 1789 US constitution
like Hamilton and Madison) saw the "minority" to be protected
as the rich. In other words, the objection is not opposed to majority
tyranny as such (they have no objections when the majority support
their right to their riches) but rather attempts of the majority to
change their society to a fairer one. However, as noted, the objection
to majority rule does contain a valid point and one which anarchists
have addressed -- namely, what about minority freedom within a self-managed
society.
There is, of course, this danger in any society, be its decision
making structure direct (anarchy) or indirect (by some form of government).
Anarchists are at the forefront in expressing concern about it (see,
for example, Emma Goldman's classic essay "Minorities versus Majorities"
in Anarchism and Other Essays). We are well aware that the
mass, as long as the individuals within it do not free themselves,
can be a dead-weight on others, resisting change and enforcing conformity.
As Goldman argued, "even more than constituted authority, it is
social uniformity and sameness that harass the individual the most."
[Red Emma Speaks, p. 93] Hence Malatesta's comment that anarchists
"have the special mission of being vigilant custodians of freedom,
against all aspirants to power and against the possible tyranny of
the majority." [Life and Ideas, p. 161]
However, rather than draw elitist conclusions from this fact of
life under capitalism and urge forms of government and organisation
which restrict popular participation (and promote rule, and tyranny,
by the few) -- as classical liberals do -- libertarians argue that
only a process of self-liberation through struggle and participation
can break up the mass into free, self-managing individuals. Moreover,
we also argue that participation and self-management is the only way
that majorities can come to see the point of minority ideas and for
seeing the importance of protecting minority freedoms. This means
that any attempt to restrict participation in the name of minority
rights actually enforces the herd mentality, undermining minority
and individual freedom rather than protecting it. As Carole Pateman
argues:
"the evidence supports the arguments . . . that we do learn
to participate by participating and that feelings of political
efficacy are more likely to be developed in a participatory
environment. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that
experience of a participatory authority structure might also
be effective in diminishing tendencies towards non-democratic
attitudes in the individual." [Participation and Democratic
Theory, p. 105]
However, while there is cause for concern (and anarchists are at
the forefront in expressing it), the "tyranny of the majority"
objection fails to take note of the vast difference between direct
and "representative" forms of democracy.
In the current system, as we pointed out in section
B.5, voters are mere passive spectators of occasional, staged,
and highly rehearsed debates among candidates pre-selected by the
corporate elite, who pay for campaign expenses. More often the public
is expected to choose simply on the basis of political ads and news
sound bites. Once the choice is made, cumbersome and ineffective recall
procedures insure that elected representatives can act more or less
as they (or rather, their wealthy sponsors) please. The function,
then, of the electorate in bourgeois "representative government"
is ratification of "choices" that have been already made
for them!
By contrast, in a direct, libertarian democracy, decisions are made
following public discussion in community assemblies open to all. After
decisions have been reached, outvoted minorities -- even minorities
of one -- still have ample opportunity to present reasoned and persuasive
counter-arguments to try to change the decision. This process of debate,
disagreement, challenge, and counter-challenge, which goes on even
after the defeated minority has temporarily acquiesced in the decision
of the majority, is virtually absent in the representative system,
where "tyranny of the majority" is truly a problem. In addition,
minorities can secede from an association if the decision reached
by it are truly offensive to them.
And let us not forget that in all likelihood, issues of personal
conduct or activity will not be discussed in the neighbourhood assemblies.
Why? Because we are talking about a society in which most people consider
themselves to be unique, free individuals, who would thus recognise
and act to protect the uniqueness and freedom of others. Unless people
are indoctrinated by religion or some other form of ideology, they
can be tolerant of others and their individuality. If this is not
the case now, then it has more to do with the existence of authoritarian
social relationships -- relationships that will be dismantled under
libertarian socialism -- and the type of person they create rather
than some innate human flaw.
Thus there will be vast areas of life in a libertarian socialist
community which are none of other people's business. Anarchists have
always stressed the importance of personal space and "private"
areas. Indeed, for Kropotkin, the failure of many "utopian"
communities directly flowed from a lack personal space. One of the
mistakes made by such "utopian" communities within capitalism
was "the desire to manage the community after the model of a family,
to make it 'the great family.' They lived all in the same house and
were thus forced to continuously meet the same 'brethren and sisters.'
It is already difficult often for two real brothers to live together
in the same house, and family life is not always harmonious; so it
was a fundamental error to impose on all the 'great family' instead
of trying, on the contrary, to guarantee as much freedom and home
life to each individual." [Small Communal Experiments and Why
they Fail, pp. 8-9]
Thus in an anarchist society, continual agreement on all issues
is not desired. The members of a free society "need only agree
as to some advantageous method of common work, and are free otherwise
to live in their own way." [Op. Cit., p. 22]
Which brings us to another key point. When anarchists talk of democratising
or communalising the household or any other association, we do not
mean that it should be stripped of its private status and become open
to the "tyranny of the majority" or regulation by general voting
in a single, universal public sphere. Rather, we mean that households
and other relationships should take in libertarian characteristics
and be consistent with the liberty of all its members. Thus a society
based on self-management does not imply the destruction of private
spheres of activity -- it implies the extension of anarchist principles
into all spheres of life, both private and public. It does not mean
the subordination of the private by the public, or vice versa.
So, in other words, it is highly unlikely that the "tyranny of
the majority" will exert itself where most rightly fear it --
in their homes, how they act with friends, their personal space, how
they act, and do on. As long as individual freedom and rights are
protected, it is of little concern what people get up to (included
the rights of children, who are also individuals and not the
property of their parents). Direct democracy in anarchist theory is
purely concerned with common resources and their use and management.
It is highly unlikely that a free society would debate issues of personal
behaviour or morality and instead would leave them to those directly
affected by them -- as it should be, as we all need personal space
and experimentation to find the way of life that best suits us.
Today an authoritarian worldview, characterised by an inability
to think beyond the categories of domination and submission, is imparted
by conditioning in the family, schools, religious institutions, clubs,
fraternities, the army, etc., and produces a type of personality that
is intolerant of any individual or group perceived as threatening
to the perpetuation of that worldview and its corresponding institutions
and values. Thus, as Bakunin argues, "public opinion" is potentially
intolerant "simply because hitherto this power has not been humanised
itself; it has not been humanised because the social life of which
it is ever the faithful expression is based . . . in the worship of
divinity, not on respect for humanity; in authority, not on liberty;
on privilege, not on equality; in the exploitation, not on the brotherhood,
of men; on iniquity and falsehood, not on justice and truth. Consequently
its real action, always in contradiction of the humanitarian theories
which it professes, has constantly exercised a disastrous and depraving
influence." [God and the State, p. 43f] In other words,
"if society is ever to become free, it will be so through liberated
individuals, whose free efforts make society." [Emma Goldman,
Anarchism and Other Essays, p. 44]
In an anarchist society, however, a conscious effort will be made
to dissolve the institutional and traditional sources of the authoritarian/submissive
type of personality, and thus to free "public opinion" of its
current potential for intolerance. In addition, it should be noted
that as anarchists recognise that the practice of self-assumed political
obligation implied in free association also implies the right to practice
dissent and disobedience as well. As Carole Pateman notes, "[e]ven
if it is impossible to be unjust to myself, I do not vote for myself
alone, but alone with everyone else. Questions about injustice are
always appropriate in political life, for there is no guarantee that
participatory voting will actually result in decisions in accord with
the principles of political morality." [The Problem of Political
Obligation, p. 160]
If an individual or group of individuals feel that a specific decision
threatens their freedom (which is the basic principle of political
morality in an anarchist society) they can (and must) act to defend
that freedom. "The political practice of participatory voting rests
in a collective self-consciousness about the meaning and implication
of citizenship. The members of the political association understand
that to vote is simultaneously to commit oneself, to commit one's
fellow citizens, and also to commit oneself to them in a mutual undertaking
. . . a refusal to vote on a particular occasion indicates that the
refusers believe . . . [that] the proposal . . . infringes the principle
of political morality on which the political association is based
. . A refusal to vote [or the use of direct action] could be seen
as an appeal to the 'sense of justice' of their fellow citizens."
[Carole Pateman, Op. Cit., p. 161]
As they no longer "consent" to the decisions made by their
community they can appeal to the "sense of justice" of their
fellow citizens by direct action and indicate that a given decision
may have impacts which the majority were not aware. Hence direct action
and dissent is a key aspect of an anarchist society and help ensure
against the tyranny of the majority. Anarchism rejects the "love
it or leave it" attitude that marks classical liberalism as well
as Rousseau (this aspect of his work being inconsistent with its foundations
in participation).
This vision of self-assumed obligation, with its basis in individual
liberty, indicates the basic flaw of Joseph Schumpeter's argument
against democracy as anything bar a political method of arriving
at decisions (in his case who will be the leaders of a society). Schumpeter
proposed the "mental experiment" of imagining a country which,
democratically, persecuted Jews, witches and Christians (see his famous
work Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy). He argues that we
should not approve of these practices just because they have been
decided upon by the democratic method and, therefore, democracy cannot
be an end in itself.
However, such systematic persecution would conflict with the rules
of procedure required if a country's or community's political method
is to be called "democratic." This is because, in order to
be democratic, the minority must be in a position for its ideas to
become the majority's via argument and convincing the majority (and
that requires freedom of discussion and association). A country or
community in which the majority persecutes or represses a minority
automatically ensures that the minority can never be in a position
to become the majority (as the minority is barred by force from becoming
so) or convince the majority of the errors of its way (even if it
cannot become the majority physically, it can become so morally by
convincing the majority to change its position). Schumpeter's example
utterly violates democratic principles and so cannot be squared with
the rules of democratic procedure. Thus majority tyranny is an outrage
against both democratic theory and individual liberty (unsurprisingly,
as the former has its roots in the latter).
This argument applies with even more force to a self-managed community
too and so any system in which the majority tyrannises over a minority
is, by definition, not self-managed as one part of the community
is excluded from convincing the other ("the enslavement of part
of a nation denies the federal principal itself." [P-J Proudhon,
The Principle of Federation, p. 42f]). Thus individual freedom
and minority rights are essential to direct democracy/self-management.
It should be stressed, however, that most anarchists do not think
that the way to guard against possible tyranny by the majority is
to resort to decision-making by consensus (where no action can be
taken until every person in the group agrees) or a property system
(based in contracts). Both consensus (see section A.2.12 -- "Is
consensus an alternative to direct democracy?") and contracts
(see section A.2.14 -- "Why is voluntarism
not enough?") soon result in authoritarian social relationships
developing in the name of "liberty."
For example, decision making by consensus tends to eliminate the
creative role of dissent and mutate into a system that pressures people
into psychic and intellectual conformity -- hardly a libertarian ideal.
In the case of property and contract based systems, those with property
have more power than those without, and so they soon determine what
can and cannot be done -- in other words, the "tyranny of the minority"
and hierarchical authority. Both alternatives are deeply flawed.
Hence most anarchists have recognised that majority decision making,
though not perfect, is the best way to reach decisions in a political
system based on maximising individual (and so social) freedom. Direct
democracy in grassroots confederal assemblies and workers' councils
ensures that decision making is "horizontal" in nature (i.e.
between equals) and not hierarchical (i.e. governmental, between
order giver and order taker). In other words, it ensures liberty.
As would be expected, no one would be forced to join a commune nor
take part in its assemblies. To suggest otherwise would be contrary
to anarchist principles. We have already indicated (in the last two
sections) why the communes would not be likely to restrict individuals
with new "laws." Thus a commune would be a free society, in
which individual liberty would be respected and encouraged.
However, what about individuals who live within the boundaries of
a commune but decide not to join? For example, a local neighbourhood
may include households that desire to associate and a few that do
not (this is actually happened during the Spanish Revolution). What
happens to the minority of dissenters?
Obviously individuals can leave to find communities more in line
with their own concepts of right and wrong if they cannot convince
their neighbours of the validity of their ideas. And, equally obviously,
not everyone will want to leave an area they like. So we must discuss
those who decide to not to find a more suitable community. Are the
communal decisions binding on non-me |
